Guelph Politicast

GUELPH POLITICAST #376 – The Year at Committees So Far...

The business of managing the City of Guelph goes beyond the confines of the council chambers, so starting this year Guelph Politico has expanded its meeting coverage to nine local boards and shared services committees. It's five months now, and a lot of different business has been done in those first five months, so we're going to stop and use this podcast to do a high-level overview.
These are the regular meetings that Guelph Politico covers: the Accessibility Advisory Committee, Committee of Adjustment, the Grand River Conservation Authority membership, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Board of Health, Heritage Guelph, the Guelph Public Library Board of Directors, the Guelph Police Services Board, Wellington County Social Services Committee, and the Transit Advisory Committee.
Now this is not a complete list of the existing committees, but they are arguably the most important ones. Some of them manage ratepayers' money that funds these services, but they all have a bearing on policy and planning and other directives at the City of Guelph. Often, before you see something brought to council, it's been raked over the hot coals of once of these committees, and covering them helps gives us a broader picture of how the proverbial sausage is made.
In that spirit we will look at some of that business from the first five months of 2023 including Public Health's re-calibration to get back to regular order now that the pandemic is officially over and the growing controversy around separating big plots of land at Committee of Adjustment. We will also look at how the Accessibility Advisory Committee has been using its authority, the growing need to recognize the library as a social service agency, and the rapid pace of structural changes at the GRCA.
So let's look at what's been happening at some of the local committees and boards on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
You can stay up to date about the latest doings at various local boards and committees by clicking that tab at the top of the Guelph Politico site (or by clicking here). Many committees will be taking the summer off after June, but it will be back to business as usual for everyone when September begins.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Open Sources Guelph #428 - June 1, 2023

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we will usher in meteorological summer by casting some sunshine on key issues. For instance, there was an election this week in Alberta and it was a close one (relatively speaking in a Alberta terms), and there was more election talk in the House of Common as nobody's happy with the former Governor General investigating interference. Also, since it's summer, let's talk about farming!
This Thursday, June 1, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Ms. Smith Goes Back to Edmonton. For those hoping that the Danielle Smith premiership of Alberta was going to be short-lived, we're here to report that she just got four more years! While Rachel Notley and the NDP made impressive gains, adding 15 seats to their roster, they ultimately fell six short of unseating the United Conservative Party from government. So where does the Wildrose Province go from here, and what will Smith and Notley do next?
The End of the Rapporteur. Last week, former Governor General David Johnston delivered his first report as the official rapporteur investigating Chinese election interference in the last two federal elections, and that was the end of the story. Come on! Of course that wasn't the end of the story!! All opposition party are questioning Johnston's determination that no public inquiry is needed, and more MPs are being identified as targets of the interference in question, so now what happens?
Farmers' Target. A few weeks ago, a collection or organizations representing Ontario farmers released a joint statement to announce their displeasure with the Ford government's Bill 97. One of the provisos that the coalition was worried about was making it easier to turn large parcels of farmland into ready to develop smaller portions for housing, and considering that Ontario is losing about 319 acres of farmland everyday already, you can probably see the urgency. This week, we're joined by Drew Spoelstra, vice president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, to talk about the issue, and how they coalition might have gotten the government to change their mind.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #299 - May 31, 2023 (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3)

This week on End Credits, we head into the beautiful and forever sky. No, we're not dying, but we are going back to space with the latest edition of the Guardians of the Galaxy, who are now up to Volume 3. Along with that, we will talk about remakes, which despite what you heard are not always terrible. All this as we take one last ride before getting to 300 episodes!
This Wednesday, May 24, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss:
Fake it Till You Remake It. This past weekend, The Little Mermaid opened in theatres everywhere, the latest in Disney's long line of live-action remakes. Now some people say that all remakes are terrible and the very idea of remaking films is bad, but you know what was a remake? 1941's The Maltese Falcon and 1956's The Ten Commandments! So this week, we will look at the panoply of remakes from the good to the bad to the sorta okay.
REVIEW: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023). Excluding crossovers, the last time the Guardians of the Galaxy were on the big screen was 2017's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. A lot's changed for the Guardians, and for the movie audience in the meantime, including a new job for filmmaker James Gunn at Marvel's distinguished competition. For now, we've got one last ride with this crew of Guardians which finds them facing off against a typical comic book megalomaniac and the secret origins of a fan favourite character, so do the Guardians deliver one last time?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #375 - Everyone is Still Free to Wear Sunscreen

June 1 marks the start of meteorological summer and that sunny and warm weather makes you want to go into the water. You’re also - hopefully - putting on sunscreen in order to reduce the risk of skin cancer, but in the last few years there’s been some reason to question whether sunscreen is as safe for our waterways even while it protects you from UV light. Should everyone still be free to wear sunscreen?
In fall 2020 there was a study out of the University of Alberta that suggested that the active ingredients found in sunscreen have detrimental effects on freshwater ecosystems. The researchers exposed water fleas, Daphnia magna to be more precise, to three common ingredients in sunscreen and the results showed that exposure to ultraviolet filters (UVFs) over a 48-hour period prevented the fleas from navigating through their environment.
This was kind of a big deal. Other studies showed that ultraviolet filters were having an effect on very sensitive sea water life forms like coral, but these are water fleas, one of the most common creatures found in almost every freshwater everywhere; if they’re feeling the effects of sunscreen ingredients leaching from people’s skin, then what is the total environmental impact from UVFs? That same team has been working on answering that question, and they recently released new findings.
The lead author of both studies, Aaron Boyd, is the guest on this week's podcast. Boyd's a grad student and researcher in the Department of Biology at the University of Alberta, and he will tell you about the ingredients in sunscreen, the difference between studying the effects of sunscreen in salt water versus freshwater, and why Daphnia magna are the chosen test subjects for these experiments. Also, where will the research go next and is it okay to wear sunscreen without killing a lake?
So let's talk about sunscreen on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
This is a link to an article on the University of Alberta for the original 2020 study and this link will take you to an article about the latest research. For the scientifically literate, you can read the original research paper published in the March issue of the Journal of Hazardous Materials. TL;DR - It’s definitely okay to wear sunscreen while you’re out there having summer fun. Don’t leave home without it.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Open Sources Guelph #427 - May 25, 2023

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're city folk! Municipal matters are top of mind on this edition of the show, as we look at independence day for three Ontario cities, and then that election to fill the vacant mayor's seat in Canada's biggest city. In the back half of the show, we will once again serve in our essential roll as the mandatory stop for all local Green Party candidates who want to get elected!
This Thursday, May 25, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
The Final a-Peel. The Ontario government announced last week that Peel is over. The region will be dissolved on January 1, 2025 as Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon become their own independent municipalities. Not a bad present for Doug Ford to give Bonnie Crombie on the eve of her announced bid to run the Ontario Liberals, but the question now is how much more meddling with municipalities is going to tale place in Ontario these next three years?
DeepStar 6ix. The Toronto mayoral by-election is entering its final month of campaigning, and from all appearances right now it seems like it's Olivia Chow's to lose. At the very least, there are about five or six likely mayors in the field of 102 (!!) and they're facing off in a couple of different debates this week. Candidates are also throwing out policy fast and furiously so what can we expect in the final couple of weeks of this election, and can anyone consolidate enough support to take on Chow?
Clancy Dance. Earlier this year, Kitchener Centre MPP Laura Mae Lindo announced that she would be stepping down at the end of the spring session, which means a by-election will be coming up the road sometime in the next couple of months. The Green Party has gotten ahead of things, buoyed by the local success of the Two Mikes (Morrice and Schreiner), and have acclaimed Kitchener councillor Aislinn Clancy as their nominee. This week, we'll talk to Clancy about being the first one in the race, why she wants to make a move to Queen's Park, and the potential fate of Waterloo Region under the current government.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #298 - May 24, 2023 (Tetris)

This week on End Credits, we play to win. Completing the trifecta of recent brand origin stories at the cinema, we come around to the video game that made Game Boy and put Russia on the map as a video game maker. Yup, we're reviewing Tetris, and in honour of that big action movie that came out this weekend, we've got to say something about the art of the car chase.
This Wednesday, May 24, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:
Coup de Chase. In honour of this past weekend's release of Fast X, and also - interestingly enough - the climax of Tetris, we're going to talk about car chases. The car chase is a well-worn staple of action cinema, when one-person chasing another on foot isn't big enough, they hop into cars, onto motorcycles, and, in some rare cases, a subway train or flying vehicle. This week, we tick off a list of some of our favourite movie (mostly) car chases.
REVIEW: Tetris (2023). Joining the recent trend of brand origin stories is this film about the video game that made handheld gaming consoles, and ended the Cold War (?). Tetris follows a game programmer played by Taron Egerton who has to out hustle billionaires, middle men and the KGB to get the rights to the famous Russian game about lining up falling four-piece blocks. Complications ensue? You bet! There's not doubt that there's a lot of dramatic aggrandizement with Tetris, but can you still enjoy this embellished-from-a-true-story story?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #374 - The Problem (?) With Government

We’re coming up on the end of the first year of the Ford government’s second term, and it’s been a highly consequential year if you work in one of Ontario's 444 municipalities. At times, it felt like there was an announcement every week about some change to how cities conduct oversight or run their own planning processes. It's enough to make you ask, "what will happen next?" and last week we got the answer.
It’s called Bill 112, the Hazel McCallion Act, and it will turn the three municipalities in Peel Region into three independent entities: Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon. On the surface, this kind of makes sense; Mississauga is Canada’s sixth biggest city, and Brampton is the ninth; on the other hand, interfering with Ontario cities has seemed to be the Ford government’s raison d’etre, and now it's being done in the name of solving the provincial housing crisis.
Housing is supposedly the reason for a lot of these changes, from Bill 23 to the dissolution of Peel Region. It's the idea that government red tape is getting in the way of more housing starts, and if more government equals more red tape, then getting rid of government should make it easier to get houses built. Is the tangled web of municipal governance in Ontario really the source of all our housing troubles? 
We put this hypothesis to the test this week with Andrew Sancton, a professor emeritus of Political Science at University of Western Ontario. He's going to talk about the history of municipal governance in Ontario, and how we ended up with regional governments in some places. He will also talk about whether or not the time has come to give cities more autonomy, and what may come from the pending review of the other regional governments in Ontario, even after they already did one.
So let's talk about the supposed problem with local governance on this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
Bill 112 has passed first reading but there’s just two weeks left in the spring sitting of the Legislature, so it may not get passed before the house rises on June 8. The Government of Ontario has set the date of January 1, 2025 as the first day of an independent Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon. An announcement will be coming soon about the appointment of regional facilitators to assess other regional governments.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Open Sources Guelph #426 - May 18, 2023

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we go back into the internet toilet. Yay? No, not yay, because we've got to tackle the increasing craziness of Canada's own version of U.S. culture wars (passports, anyone?), and then speaking of sewers we have to get back into the mind of a former game show host/con artist who was once the leader of the free world. For the interview this week, good news! An exemplar of the ways that labour organizing still matters.
This Thursday, May 18, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Prêt-à-Passport. It's been a strange week in Canada. The reveal last week of the newly designed passport erupted into a full blown controversy because images of Terry Fox and Vimy Ridge were replaced with image of bears and people skating. Confused? It's just the Canadian version of the stupid culture wars drowning American politics, like these new F**k Trudeau "parties" in Canadian Tire parking lots. Is there anyway we can pull the plug on this kind of silliness?
Town Hall Pass. Last week, CNN - "America's news leader" - held a Bund meeting on live TV. Former U.S. President Donald Trump, somehow still the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, was invited to take part in a so-called town hall where he lied about the 2020 election, defamed a women he was found guilty of sexually abusing, and called the host a "nasty person". So it begs the question, did the U.S. mainstream media learn anything from the last eight years?
Union Specific. Earlier this month, it was announced that a Starbucks in Uptown Waterloo had successfully organized under the United Steelworkers union, which is a first for a Starbucks here in Ontario. There's a growing demand for union representation in the service industry, which has long be able to block labour organizing on the ground through various "union busting" tactics, including Starbucks. But labour won this round, and in this week's interview we're joined by organizers Jaymi and Kale who will tell us how they did it.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #297 - May 17, 2023 (BlackBerry)

This week on End Credits we'll BBM you. Are you old enough to remember BBM? Maybe it doesn't matter because the direct messaging app between BlackBerry devices is a minor plot point in the new film about the titular device. This week, we're going to review the new true Canadian story, BlackBerry, and talk about other movies about fights overs technology.
This Wednesday, May 17, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:
Tech Wars. This week's movie is about the human conflict that's created as a result of technological innovation. Sometimes these movies are about man versus machine, but sometimes it also means man versus man *over* the machine. Then, there are the stories about how man's faith in machines is his undoing, and when you add all this up, it means you get the movies of the pre-review segment on this week's show as we dig into, "Tech Wars"
REVIEW: BlackBerry (2023). Around the turn of the 21st century, a Waterloo company became the centre of the tech universe when the device they created changed telecommunications forever. They called it the Blackberry, both fans and critics called it the "CrackBerry" and for the better part of a decade, if you had a smartphone, it was probably from the finest minds in K-W. This period of time's now been captured in BlackBerry, the amazing rise and stunning fall of a made-in-Canada success story. But is the made-in-Canada film about it any good?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #373 - The Eye of the Storm

If you’ve ever been downtown on a Friday night from November to April, then you know how much of the action is centralized around the Sleeman Centre. The Guelph Storm have been a local institution since their inaugural season in 1994, a Friday night beacon for Royal City hockey fans, so in honour of all that, we’ll talk to the man who turned the Dukes of Hamilton into Guelph’s team.
Mike Kelly became the first general manager of the Guelph Storm in 1991, and by the 1994-95 season the team finished first in the OHL, which was an accomplishment that won him the distinction of being voted the OHL Executive of the Year. Two years later, the Storm made it to their first ever Memorial Cup though they ended up losing the OHL Championship. The Peterborough Petes won that year, but they were also hosting the Cup.
Kelly moved on from the Storm in 1997 for different gigs in the OHL, and overseas with the Alleghe Hockey Club in Italy, but he came back to Guelph in 2010 where he helped lead the team to one more OHL championship and Memorial Cup appearance in 2014. He retired from hockey completely in 2017 but he took to the ice at the Sleeman Centre last month to  be honoured after the announcement that we was joining the Guelph Sports Hall of Fame with four other local sports legends.
But for our purposes, we're focusing on Kelly, who talks to us about how it feels to end up in his second Hall of Fame, and how his two loves, hockey and education, informed everything he's done in his career. He will also talk about his best day as the Storm’s general manager, and the worst day. Plus, did he know which Storm players would go on to have a future in hockey, and how did he manage it when it turns out they didn’t? Also, does he still follow the Storm in retirement?
So let's talk about local hockey history on this week's Guelph Politicast!
The 2023 Guelph Sports Hall of Fame Induction and Kiwanis Sports Celebrity Dinner is tonight, Wednesday May 17, at the Italian Canadian Club. All of this year’s inductees will then be immortalized on the wall at the Sleeman Centre with all current members of the Hall of Fame, and you can learn more about the Hall here. The Guelph Storm are done for the season, but you can stay connected to the team at their website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.